Steam for Linux

UPDATE:When I tried to recreate this issue again today, to further investigate on the matter, I am unable to. TF2 runs perfectly regardless of the flash plugin being in the plugin directory or not.

I did however do one other thing before returning to this case: I've installed the libpci3:i386 package to get rid of the Serious Sam 3 error message (as described in this thread).

No idea if that was of any relevance, but either way: It works now. I'll update this thread again should the issue return, but my gutfeeling tells me it won't.

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ORIGINAL MESSAGE:

I almost can't believe it myself, but here goes:I am running 64bit Ubuntu 12.04. Up until recently I've never gotten TF2 to work, it always crashed when I started a new game and got to the "chalkboard picture", then the game would just exit.

A few days ago, in order to get flash video playback to work in the Steam client I copied the 32 bit libflashplayer.so from Adobe into the ~/Steam/ubuntu12_32/plugins directory.

Then later I figured I'd file an issue report on my TF2 problem, since it seemed other Linux users seemed to be able to play it. So I fired up TF2 again, and what do you know... All of a sudden it worked.

The *only* thing I had done was to copy this flash file into the plugins directory. But just to get it confirmed, I have now twice moved the libflashplayer.so out of the plugins dir, started the game, experienced the crash, then moved libflashplayer.so back in again, and TF2 works again. Twice.

So, well... Hence this is my issue report. I have no idea *why* this happens, my logic tells me it has to be a coincidence, but my testing indicates otherwise.

Beamboom, that does sound weird but we (the team) are in uncharted territory when it comes to 64-bit because our main efforts have been with Ubuntu 32-bit. We're learning more and more every day and every little bit of info helps. I will add your info to our bug database and if you find out anything more please add it to this thread.Thanks!

@Rain Ninja: But are you running Ubuntu 64bit? Cause that makes all the difference. I got 32bit Ubuntu running on my laptop and Steam is running out of the box there. On 64 bit you need to manually add a 32bit Flash driver in for flash to work in steam client.

@Frank: Yes it sounds really weird, I know. But if that part of the game (the chalkboard with the gameplay info) indeed is built using Flash then it would at least make *some* sense. Anyhow, I'll try to look more into it and see if I can get more info on this issue.

As for 64bit, I believe it is wise to also give 64bit a focus eventually, cause as far as I know most (educated) Linux users today install the 64bit version on their 64bit hardware. It simply is the better choise when it comes to other usage (but I'm sure there are some stats out there in these regards).

Hmm. I will have to try and see if there is a difference between starting a local/tutorial game, and going online. I mainly tried the tutorial modes. But the screen where the game crash is before the server is up and running, it's a step before you enter the game. You see a chalkboard with a scrollable window listing the objectives of the upcoming game. That's where it crashes.

But I'll try the different modes a bit more and see if this problem is related directly to that chalkboard or not.Thanks, John.

TF2 shouldn't be relying on flash at all. I'm running 64-bit Ubuntu as my main dev box here and don't have libflashplayer.so anywhere on my machine. Can you try running with strace or pmap and see if that file is loaded? Thanks.

Mikes, I got TF2 running now, I am not sure how/why it started working (unfortunately I did several things I thought would be unreated to this, but apparently wasn't) but I've not been able to recreate the issue.

However! I've discovered I have the exact same problem now with the TF2 BETA, and I shall be a bit more careful with how I progress now, to try to single out the problem here.